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Introduction: We report an investigation on collaboration practices in research papers published in the most prestigious English-medium astrophysics journals. Method: We propose an evaluation method based on three numerical indicators to study and compare, in absolute terms, three different types of collaboration (international, national and local) and authors' mobility on the basis of co-authorship. Analysis: We analysed 300 randomly selected research papers in three different time periods and used the student's t-test to determine whether the paired two-sample differences observed were statistically significant or not. Results: International collaboration is more common than national and local collaboration. International, national and local authors' mobility and intra-national collaboration do not seriously affect the indicators of the principal levels of collaboration. International collaboration and authors' mobility are more relevant for authors publishing in European journals, whereas national and intra-national collaboration and national mobility are more important for authors publishing in US journals. Conclusions: We explain the observed differences and patterns in terms of the specific scope of each journal and the socio-economic and political situation in both geographic contexts (Europe and the USA). Our study provides a global picture of collaboration practices in astrophysics and its possible application to many other sciences and fields would undoubtedly help bring into focus the really big issues for overall research management and policy.

Objective: To assess rates of traversing barriers to care to access optimal clinical outcomes in people with migraine internationally. Background: People in need of medical care for migraine should consult a health care professional knowledgeable in migraine management, obtain an accurate diagnosis, and receive an individualized treatment plan, which includes scientific society guideline-recommended treatments where appropriate. Methods: The Chronic Migraine Epidemiology and Outcomes-International (CaMEO-I) Study was a cross-sectional, web-based survey conducted from July 2021 through March 2022 in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (US). Respondents who met modified International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition, criteria for migraine and had Migraine Disability Assessment Scale (MIDAS) scores of ≥ 6 (i.e., mild, moderate, or severe disability) were deemed to need medical care and were included in this analysis. Minimally effective treatment required that participants were currently consulting a health care professional for headache (barrier 1), reported an accurate diagnosis (barrier 2), and reported use of minimally appropriate pharmacologic treatment (barrier 3; based on American Headache Society 2021 Consensus Statement recommendations). Proportions of respondents who successfully traversed each barrier were calculated, and chi-square tests were used to assess overall difference among countries. Results: Among 14,492 respondents with migraine, 8,330 had MIDAS scores of ≥ 6, were deemed in need of medical care, and were included in this analysis. Current headache consultation was reported by 35.1% (2926/8330) of respondents. Compared with the US, consultation rates and diagnosis rates were statistically significantly lower in all other countries except France where they were statistically significantly higher. Total appropriate treatment rates were also statistically significantly lower in all other countries compared with the US except France, which did not differ from the US. All 3 barriers were traversed by only 11.5% (955/8330) of respondents, with differences among countries (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Of people with migraine in need of medical care for migraine, less than 15% traverse all 3 barriers to care. Although rates of consultation, diagnosis, and treatment differed among countries, improvements are needed in all countries studied to reduce the global burden of migraine. Trial registration: NA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the scientific production and the contents associated with the sustainable development goals and their integration with universities during the past 21 years. Although many of the topics related to sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been addressed in different studies for decades, it is since 2015 onwards that they gained greater prominence due to the inclusion of higher education as an important actor in the fulfillment of the 2030 agenda and the United Nations SDGs. For the purpose of this paper, a bibliometric analysis of 871 papers, 535 documents in Scopus, and 336 in Web of Science (WoS) from 1998 to 2019 was performed, and the Bibliometrix analysis tool was used. The objective of this mapping is to answer the following research question: Is the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals and Universities a field of study? An analysis of the network of collaborators and trend topics in Scopus and WoS allows us to identify the concurrence and relationships of some keywords, such as sustainable development, sustainability and planning, and some background words, such as humans and global health. In another analysis, the word "higher education" is related to change. This article suggests that the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in Universities is becoming a field of study under exploration, with a peak of production in 2016 and that has remained stable in the last three years, but thanks to the leading role assigned to Universities, intellectual production should increase in the following years.

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border higher education institutions in Mainland China have experienced the process from accidental and disorder to a systematic and quality orientation.

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly, systematic differences have been documented with respect to adults' participation in education, which can be considered as a means to develop and maintain skills. From a psychological perspective, motivation to learn is considered a key factor associated with both skill development and participation in (further) education. In order to account for motivation when analyzing PIAAC data, four items from the PIAAC background questionnaire were recently compiled into a motivation-to-learn scale. This scale has been found to be invariant (i.e., showing full weak and partial strong measurement invariance) across 21 countries. Methods: This paper presents further analyses using multiple-group graded response models to scrutinize the validity of the motivation-to-learn scale for group comparisons. Results: Results indicate at least partial strong measurement invariance across gender, age groups, level of education, and migration background in most countries under study (all CFI > 0.95, all RMSEA < 0.08). Thus, the scale is suitable for comparing both means and associations across these groups. Conclusions:Results are discussed in light of country characteristics, challenges of measurement invariance testing, and potential future research using PIAAC data.

When investigating the association between brain tumors and use of mobile telephones, accurate data on tumor position are essential, due to the highly localized absorption of energy in the human brain from the radio-frequency fields emitted. We used a point process model to investigate this association using information that included tumor localization data from the INTERPHONE Study (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Our main analysis included 792 regular mobile phone users diagnosed with a glioma between 2000 and 2004. Similar to earlier results, we found a statistically significant association between the intracranial distribution of gliomas and the self-reported location of the phone. When we accounted for the preferred side of the head not being exclusively used for all mobile phone calls, the results were similar. The association was independent of the cumulative call time and cumulative number of calls. However, our model used reported side of mobile phone use, which is potentially influenced by recall bias. The point process method provides an alternative to previously used epidemiologic research designs when one is including localization in the investigation of brain tumors and mobile phone use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite significant investments to support primary care internationally, income-based inequities in access to quality health care are present in many high-income countries. This study aims to determine whether low- and middle-income groups are more likely to report poor quality of primary care (PC) than high-income groups cross-nationally. Methods: The 2011 Commonwealth Fund Telephone Survey of Sicker Adults is a cross-sectional study across eleven countries. Respondents were recruited from randomly selected households. We used data from surveys conducted in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We identified all questions relating to primary care performance, and categorized these into five dimensions: 1) access to care, 2) coordination 3) patient-centered care, and 4) technical quality of care. We used logistic regression with low and middle-income as the comparison groups and high-income as the referent. Results: Fourteen thousand two hundred sixty-two respondents provided income data. Countries varied considerably in their extent of income disparity. Overall, 24.7% were categorized as low- and 13.9% as high-income. The odds of reporting poor access to care were higher for low- and middle-income than high-income respondents in Canada, New Zealand and the US. Similar results were found for Sweden and Norway on coordination; the opposite trend favoring the low- and middle-income groups was found in New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. The odds of reporting poor patient-centered care were higher for low-income than high-income respondents in the Netherlands, Norway, and the US; in Australia, this was true for low- and middle-income respondents. On technical quality of care, the odds of reporting poor care were higher for the low- and middle-income comparisons in Canada and Norway; in Germany, the odds were higher for low-income respondents only. The odds of reporting poor technical quality of care were higher for high-income than low-income respondents in the Netherlands. Conclusion: Inequities in quality PC for low and middle income groups exist on at least one dimension in all countries, including some that in theory provide universal access. More research is needed to fully understand equity in the PC sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development and enhancement of occupational health services (OHS) at the national level is central to ensuring the sustainable health, well-being and work engagement of the working population. However, due to differences in national health, social security and occupational safety and health systems, the content, capacity, coverage and provisions of OHS vary considerably across national contexts. Obtaining a better understanding in terms of such similarities and variations internationally is essential as such comparative information can help inform evidenced-based decision-making on OHS at both policy and practice levels. This paper therefore reviews and analyses the key policies, standards and approaches in OH systems and services, using both academic and grey literature, across 12 industrialised countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom and the United States of America). It provides a detailed overview and categorization of OHS in these selected countries in terms of the legal and policy context, organisation and financing and coverage and staffing while specifically discussing variations aimed at psychosocial risk management and the promotion of mental health and well-being at work. It draws conclusions on key development needs of OHS internationally to ensure psychosocial risk management and mental health promotion are prioritised effectively in a preventive manner.

Studying weekend-weekday variation in ground-level ozone (O 3 ) allows one to better understand O 3 formation conditions, with a potential for developing effective strategies for O 3 control. Reducing inappropriately the O 3 precursors emissions can either produce no reduction or increase surface O 3 concentrations. This paper analyzes the weekend-weekday differences of O 3 at 300 rural and 808 urban background stations worldwide from 2005 to 2014, in order to investigate the O 3 weekend effect over time and assess the effectiveness of the precursors emissions control policies for reducing O 3 levels. Data were analyzed with the non-parametric Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen estimator. Rural sites typically did not experience a weekend-weekday effect. In all urban stations, the mean O 3 concentration on the weekend was 12% higher than on weekdays. Between 2005 and 2014, the annual mean of daily O 3 concentrations increased at 74% of urban sites worldwide (+ 0.41 ppb year -1 ) and decreased in the United Kingdom (- 0.18 ppb year -1 ). Over this time period, emissions of O 3 precursors declined significantly. However, a greater decline in nitrogen oxides (NO x ) emissions caused an increase in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) to NO x ratios leading to O 3 formation. In France, South Korea and the United Kingdom, most urban stations showed a significant upward trend (+ 1.15% per year) for O 3 weekend effect. Conversely, in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United States, the O 3 weekend effect showed a significant downward trend (- 0.26% per year). Further or inappropriate control of anthropogenic emissions in Canada, Southern Europe, Japan, South Korea and the United States might result in increased daily O 3 levels in urban areas., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This paper contributes to the growing literature regarding the role of Information and Communication Technologies as well as Innovation on driving the level of carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in context of the 21st conference of the Parties to the Climate convention (COP21). Drawing the data from 13 selected G-20 countries (including Argentina, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States) during the period of 15 years, our study achieves significant results. First, only five factors impede the carbon emissions namely energy price, foreign direct investment, technology, spending on innovation and trade openness while the remainder of determinants contribute to contamination of environment, including financial development. Second, when it comes to economic growth, information and communication technological and financial development are positive driving factors. Our results do reject the absence of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) from our sample. Finally, our study empirically suggests that the work of controlling consumption of oil and environmentally friendly process including manufacture-trading in these economies will limit the amount of pollution., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Treatment with new and/or innovative drugs with uncertain safety and efficacy profile is associated with substantial ethical concerns. The main objective of this paper is to present guidance on the use of such drugs contained in: (i) major international codes and guidelines pertaining to medical ethics and biomedical research; (ii) national codes of medical ethics and professional conduct of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, France and Germany. Out of the four international codes and guidelines analysed, only the Declaration of Helsinki addresses the question of the use of unproven drugs. Among national codes, only two (USA and New Zealand) explicitly allow for use of new or innovative drugs. Moreover, treatment with unproven drugs seems to be permissible under the French code, though this is not stated explicitly. The remaining codes do not contain any articles on the use of new and innovative drugs. An update of existing articles, as well as the addition of new guidelines to the codes, should be considered in view of the rapid pace of development and introduction to clinical practice of new drugs. This work is relevant to innovative off-label applications of approved drugs and expanded access to investigational drugs., (© 2018 The British Pharmacological Society.)